Danica, Danica, Danica.

With the recent frenzy surrounding Danica Patrick, you might think she was put here by the racing gods themselves, sent from above to save NASCAR.

“

Dick Berggren ... told me I should go down to Danica's trailer and that she needs to thank me for paving the road.

”

-- SHAWNA ROBINSON

Larger than the pothole that almost ate the Daytona 500, Patrick is a topic of conversation everywhere: network television, boardrooms, grocery stores and now, stock-car land. Nonbelievers are eating their words and middle-age men in the media centers can't stop Googling and therefore ogling over her Go Daddy girl images.

And while I'm certainly tuned in -- yes, I watched her on Ellen recently and yes, I thought she was funny, great, cute and everything else a girl looks for in a bestie -- I can't help but wonder if Patrick's predecessors are at home throwing old helmets at the television sets.

Never before has a female driver been handed the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, like the 27-year-old Patrick. She has a multi-year deal with one of the sport's premier Nationwide Series teams, engine support from Hendrick Motorsports and veteran Cup drivers such as Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick willing to help her along her 13-race endeavor this season.

When Janet Guthrie qualified for the Indianapolis 500 in 1977, the male drivers protested. They "feared for their safety" and said women were emotionally unstable. On the NASCAR side, when Guthrie competed in the 1976 World 600, Richard Petty said his wife could have driven better with 14 screaming' kids in the back seat.

Fortunately for Danica, and the rest of us, times have changed. But the ridiculing and the less-than-warm welcomes still went on for female drivers through the 1980s and '90s.

So while I think women should rally behind Patrick in the name of girl power, it should be noted that the red-carpet welcome she is receiving not only is because of her talent and allure, but also because her predecessors worked their fingers to the bone breaking down barriers inside NASCAR's still-to-this-day male-dominated garage.

Pay homage to the ones berated for making a clean pass on a male driver, pay homage to the ones who brought diversity training to the good ol' boys in the South and especially pay homage to the ones who sidelined their racing careers in order to populate the driver pool by raising NASCAR's next future star.

Video:
• NASCAR Minute: Danica mania

Familiarize yourself with some of these women:

• Robin McCall still holds the record for one of the youngest drivers to qualify for a Cup Series event at age 18.
• Shawna Robinson was the last female to run the Daytona 500; she finished 24th.
• Patty Moise was the first woman to lead a Nationwide Series race and in 1989 broke the one-lap, closed-course speed record at Talladega Superspeedway when she drove 217.498 mph.
• Erin Crocker was the first female to sit on the front row in a Truck Series race and first female to run a full season in the series.

“

But there were times when my crew chief told me as I was passing a male driver that on the radio they would say, 'Are you going to let the blank pass you?' They would use different terminology of course.

”

-- PATTY MOISE

Most of these women competed on partial schedules and with subpar equipment because they never could get high-dollar and long-term sponsorship support. You could also argue some were simply born in the wrong decade; NASCAR wasn't ready to get behind a female at that time. Eventually they all grew tired of chasing money that was never going to come and closed the doors on their dreams.

"I quit trying to get sponsorship and made the decision at the point, at the age, for me personally, I had not achieved the success I wanted to achieve so I moved on," said Moise, who today events horses, but long before her career ended married fellow Nationwide Series competitor Elton Sawyer, now the competition director for Red Bull Racing.

Moise said she didn't want to stop racing but growing up a road racer she said she lacked the background needed to find success in stock cars.

Nevertheless, people consider her a pioneer.

"Gosh, it makes me sound so old like I came over in a covered wagon," Moise said. "I hope based on the way I conducted myself I had a positive impact on NASCAR as well as a majority of my fellow competitors. If I did that then I do feel as if I paved a way."

Moise certainly took her licks being a female racing stock cars. Today it would be outrageous to think a male driver would wreck Patrick for passing a lapped car but it happened to Moise.

"On more than one occasion," she said. "I hope people have progressed as humans enough by now. But there were times when my crew chief told me as I was passing a male driver that on the radio they would say, 'Are you going to let the blank pass you?' They would use different terminology of course."

Some drivers had real difficulties being passed by a female.

For McCall, it was pounded in her head at a young age racing quarter midgets that she was not a female driver but merely a driver. At 21, she married Wally Dallenbach and for years the two raced on different coasts and would meet in the middle. They started a family and had two boys and one girl.

In the meanwhile, McCall Dallenbach waited on the right opportunity, putting together races at local tracks here and there, and eventually made a couple of Cup starts in the 1980s for J.D. Stacy. But financial problems ended what could have been a promising career and she ultimately decided to invest her time elsewhere.

"I was thinking if I'm not going to do this 100 percent then I don't want to do it at all," she said. "If I did get hurt doing something that didn't mean anything to me and cost me time away from my kids then what's the point?"

She was hired to appear as a driver in car commercials and even did stunt work in the movie Bad Boys II, but her greatest joy is now coaching her 13-year-old racing daughter, Kate.

“

I was thinking if I'm not going to do this 100 percent then I don't want to do it at all.

”

-- ROBIN McCALL DALLENBACH

"I'm trying to teach her to be mentally tough," she said. "I tell her if she puts her nose in there she's not backing out. That's my spot on the race track and I own it at this time and if you're going to take it away from me we are going to have a problem."

McCall Dallenbach learned to be tough racing short tracks in the South and when she finally made it to the Cup level drivers such as Darrell Waltrip and Davey Alison knew she was a racer and a tough one at that. Racing with a female on the track wasn't an issue for them.

"But in the end I followed the path that life gave me and went through the doors that opened," she said.

Robinson is another story of lost sponsorship and less-than-ideal opportunities. But what she proved is that you can have a family and be a racer at the same time. In the middle of her career she had two children and came back in 1999 to post some of her most successful finishes.

"It was 1994, I didn't have a ride, I had just gotten married and Mark Reno called to see if I wanted to drive James Finch's ARCA car but I knew I might be pregnant. I went and took three more pregnancy tests and called him back. He said being pregnant was the first excuse he had ever gotten from a driver," Robinson said.

She can laugh about it now because in 1999 she drove the Daytona ARCA race for Finch and finished second, and made her first Cup start in 2001 and continued on a part-time basis until 2005.

"I regret not sticking it out that last year, but this year in Daytona I received the best compliment from Dick Berggren. He told me I should go down to Danica's trailer and that she needs to thank me for paving the road. So I feel like I paved the way somewhat. People who knew me and raced with me, they knew what I could do and I gained some respect."

Each female driver that enters the sport brings something unique and leaves behind a notable impression that hopefully brings NASCAR closer to the day when the Cup Series boasts a full-time competitive female star.

And I hope it is Patrick, but to the women in the thick of their battles -- Ali Owens, Chrissy Wallace and Jennifer Jo Cobb -- keep digging.

Just remember, you can't know where you're going until you know where you've been.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Related:
• Robinson celebrates women in racing, new career